... which came to the conclusion that 10-20 years are needed to prepare for peak oil, i.e. 1997–2007 as start year, why was no action taken in 2009, 8 years before the peak?

(7) In the EWP, why was the warning of the IEA’s Chief Economist Fatih Birol in ABC TV’s oil crunch show in April 2011 ignored in which he said that conventional oil production has already peaked in 2006?http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/3201781.htm

... and that governments should have started to get away from oil already 10 years ago, that is in 2000?

Of course such a report makes no sense if peak oil is in 2017. So was this report used to cover up the original report 117 on peak oil?

Problems with coal-to-liquids Piers proposes coal to liquids (CTL) as a solution to replace declining oil production. Unfortunately, CO2 emissions are much higher for fuels from CTL as shown in this table:

Whether carbon capture and sequestration makes fuels commercially viable is more than doubtful. NASA climatologist James Hansen has calculated that we have to reduce CO2 concentration in the atmosphere to 350 ppm.

Target atmospheric CO2: Where should humanity aim?Paleoclimate data show that climate sensitivity is ~3°C for doubled CO2, including only fast feedback processes. Equilibrium sensitivity, including slower surface albedo feedbacks, is ~6°C for doubled CO2 for the range of climate states between glacial conditions and ice-free Antarctica. Decreasing CO2 was the main cause of a cooling trend that began 50 mm years ago, the planet being nearly ice-free until CO2 fell to 450±100 ppm; barring prompt policy changes, that critical level will be passed, in the opposite direction, within decades.

If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm, but likely less that. The largest uncertainty in the target arises from possible changes of non-CO2 forcings.

An initial 350 ppm CO2 target may be achievable by phasing out coal use except where CO2 is captured and adopting agricultural and forestry practices that sequester carbon. If the present overshoot of this target CO2 is not brief, there is a possibility of seeding irreversible catastrophic effects.http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/ha00410c.html

From the above table we can see that coal-to-liquids has a much lower EROI than oil. This is what a study came up with:

Economic feasibility of coal-to-liquids development in Alaska’s interiorThus, an estimate of energy used per ton (excluding construction and transportation) is approximately 10,818,336 BTUs/ton. Dividing the energy content of F‐T liquids per ton by this amount yields an approximate EROI of 3.95. This is almost exactly the 4.0 EROI figure for coal liquefaction reported by Wilshire et al. (2008), and so is probably a reasonable estimate.

An average EROI for crude oil currently stands at about 20:1. Thus, using CTL liquids rather than crude is far more inefficient, implying a faster drawdown of scarce energy supplies relative to what we can achieve by greatly improving the energy efficiency of transport, power production, and heating and thereby extending the life of crude oil supplies until we can develop long term renewable solutions. One such solution -- hydropower provided by the Susitna dam -- is the kind of alternative that should receive careful consideration as an alternative use of public funds for energy infrastructure.http://www.sustainable-economy.org/main/news/1

The above EROI for CTL is barely above the minimum for a sustainable society to survive. Our educated guess is that the minimum EROI for an oil-based fuel that will deliver a given service (i.e. miles driven, house heated) to the consumer will be something more than 3:1 when all of the additional energy required to deliver and use that fuel are properly accounted for.http://energybulletin.net/node/52341

One alternative transport fuel is natural gas (as CNG for short distance and LNG for long-distance), but:

Drivers of these trucks sleep in the 1st car behind the loco, not at the wheel and then crashing into homes at 5 am. Let’s hope other newspapers pick up the story and bring about the long over-due change in energy and transport policies.

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